Take Note

Evolution of teaching

In July 1925, the nation was spellbound by the verbal sparring at
what many considered to be the "trial of the century."

Seventy years later, echoes from the courtroom drama known as the
"Scopes monkey trial" can still be heard in American science
education--and in the town of Dayton, Tenn., where the trial
occurred.

This year's annual Scopes Festival, coordinated by nearby Bryan
College, packed in out-of-towners for three days of re-enactments of
the trial in the original Rhea County Courthouse, according to Tom
Best, the city recorder in Dayton.

Seventy summers ago, spectators from across the country came to
Dayton to watch two eminent lawyers wrangle over whether John T.
Scopes, the coach at Dayton High School, had defied a state law
forbidding the teaching of evolution.

Coverage of the case enhanced the national reputation of H.L.
Mencken, a columnist for the Baltimore Evening Sun.

After eight days of heated exchanges between defense attorney
Clarence Darrow and prosecutor William Jennings Bryan, Scopes was found
guilty. Mencken's employer paid Scopes' $100 fine.

Dayton High School no longer exists. More than a decade ago it
became part of Rhea County High School.

And the newspaper that did so much to publicize the trial is slated
to become just another memory. The Evening Sun, hit by sagging
circulation and revenues, will stop publishing Sept. 15.

But communities still wrangle over the teaching of evolution.

Eugenie Scott, the executive director of the Berkeley, Calif.-based
National Center for Science Education, a creationism watchdog group,
noted that two years ago a conservative-Christian majority on the
Vista, Calif., school board appeared poised to adopt creationist tenets
in the science curriculum there. Angry voters ousted them late last
year.

--PETER WEST

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